Am I the only one who finds that an eerie scene? Maybe it's the unknown crew or the light...or the red uniforms - my god get those people out of there!

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There's a bunch of pics of those two women. Unfortunately, this is the only one that really lent itself to photomanipulation.

It's entirely coincidental, but as it happens the Trek Remastered Scalos cityscape has the exact same "ground" color as the one the women in the pic are standing on. Sort of makes the coloring seem appropriate, I think. Though again, it was all just pure luck ...

It's nice, but nope, ethically (and legally I might add (been there, done that in regard to my art trying to be hijacked), as all art is automatically protected under an artist's intellectual property rights), even if credited, you cannot ever use another artist's work without their express permission to do so. If permission is granted, it is then up to said artist if they would like credit to be given to them or not.

It's nice, but nope, ethically (and legally I might add (been there, done that in regard to my art trying to be hijacked), as all art is automatically protected under an artist's intellectual property rights), even if credited, you cannot ever use another artist's work without their express permission to do so. If permission is granted, it is then up to said artist if they would like credit to be given to them or not.

I didn't have your permission to cut it out, remove all traces of the original context, flip it, rotate it, scale it to tiny, nor essentially make it utterly unrecognizable.

This being the case, do you insist that I remove the shuttle from the picture?

I can tell you that I had no malice aforethought. It was suggested that I insert a shuttlecraft, so I Googled for images. Yours came up, and happened to be the right angle to look like the shuttle was going away from the scene. The lighting was reasonable for the existing light angle, which was my primary concern.

Furthermore, intellectual property arguments aside, I'm curious how someone can be forced to stop using artwork that was publicly published on the Web?

Seriously, the bottom line is that when you publish something publicly to millions of individuals, there is absolutely no way to stop those individuals from re-using your art. It's simply a given of the medium that others may well do what I did.

I'm sorry, but it's true. No one can stop me from doing it, period. You might want to stop me, but you can't. The reality of what's called "intellectual property" completely falls apart when anyone can download anything from anywhere.

Furthermore, to argue that I shouldn't be allowed to do it is to argue in favor of a 100% police state. After all, 24x7x365 monitoring and enforcement is the only way to make sure I don't whip out the Gimp and start amusing myself late at night ...

The only way to keep people from not re-using your art, purely on a practical level, is quite simple: never, ever publish it. Don't let anyone ever see it. Who knows if they might, say, sketch it from memory -- thereby stealing your art?

Also, from the philosophical perspective, I'm unclear about something: aside from doing it digitally, how is what I've done here any different than making a collage?

Are you suggesting that students are stealing art whenever they do a collage for school?

Or is the objection that considerably more people will see my digital collage than might see it if I were a 4th-grader? Again, keeping in mind that I did it as a lark in my free time and am in no way charging anyone to see it.

Well, the fabulous custome pics are by the girls from Chonastock. Always loved the look of the Andorian chick.

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Yes, and to be clear, I'm going through my Picasa albums and adding sources, names, tags, etc. At some point in the indeterminate future, when you click these images and go to my Picasa, you'll see more documentation and credits than the average person dreams of.

A good example is this:

If you click that, you'll see that I've tagged it, identified the three people in it, noted the series and episode name, and basically done everything but credit the actors and production staff. I would, but I'm not that anal retentive.

I'm unclear how one can accuse me of stealing art when, as a matter of policy, I'm attempting to credit everyone in sight in an extremely anal-retentive fashion ...

Admittedly, I've not done it yet for this series, but I'll get around to it. I was mostly amusing myself with the Gimp, and it hadn't occurred to me to tag the pics yet.

However, this tagging is a matter of policy for me. After having scanned hundreds of my grandmother's ancient pictures and having no idea who any of the people in it are, I've decided to spare my grandkids the trouble.

All my pics -- any kind -- go to Picasa and get tagged to within an inch of their lives.

Well. to start with. You can get banned from trekbbs. It's part of the forum rules here to give credit to the original artist.

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I just want to be clear about this argument, because I find it highly specious:

Yesterday, I had an itch. I'd seen the picture of the two girls in the photoshoot and realized it could be photoshopped quite nicely -- even by someone totally artistically challenged like myself. So I whipped out the Gimp and amused myself for a couple of hours. I thought the TrekBBS Art forum members might be interested in the results, so I posted it.

I did not credit all the various players rather specifically because Picasa is a far better medium for doing so. Further, by linking to Picasa from the posted pics (as I did), any and all identification and tagging is available to any user who wants to see it.

Is it therefore necessary for me to post the original artists: the DeviantArt models and photographers; the artist who did the Scalos cityscape for Trek Remastered, our own deg3D (whose real name I didn't even know until I searched it so that I can tag it in Picasa); and some nameless photographer who took a picture of a Japanese bullet train?

(Particularly in the case of the bullet train, I'm not even sure if one could determine who the original photographer was. I just Googled "bullet train" and chose the first image with adequate lighting and angle.)

Is it necessary to quote all this information separately every time I post something, particularly when Picasa shows (or is being updated to show -- I have a ton of pics, and most of them are a hell of a lot more important to me than these three) all of this information for anyone who cares to look?

Look, the bottom line is that I was killing some time and thought the people in the forum might be interested. If this is really a problem, then the only way to deal with it is to do such work for myself and never post it where anyone can see.

I can't even email it, for fear that someone might post it publicly without crediting the original artists -- or worse, crediting me as the sole artist.

Is that the intent of those arguing that this couple of hours' amusement constitutes stealing others' work?

Also, I'm flaunting nothing with respect to how easy it is to do what I've done. The fact that it's easy is kind of the point: I can (and may) stop posting such things in public to avoid IP Nazis losing it on me. But that absolutely won't stop me from amusing myself in private.

That's the way the Internet works: millions of individuals using it to do whatever the hell they feel like, regardless of what any other individual may think.

In short, if you post something on the Internet, it becomes fair game because that's how the Internet works. You can make me retreat to the shadows and amuse myself alone, but you can't make me stop amusing myself.

(By the way, I should note that from an Internet perspective, I'm just being a nice guy by even mentioning the original artists. The overwhelming majority of people couldn't care less and would laugh at the suggestion. That's just how non-intuitive the argument is.)